Halfway through soldering on the LED strip wires, I realized that I could have made the job simpler for myself if I had created just 4 rails (common anode, red, green blue) for each LED strip to attach to, instead of making separate individual connectors for each LED strip that would attach to the actual electronics board. Plus, it would have also been a much cleaner and simpler design! On the upside, the lights all worked, and now each strip could be controlled!
(Running off default Arduino PWM frequency - might change later)
Above: RGBeta lights demo!
Oh, MITERS people - listen to how awesome and random they are.
Above: TANGLE OF WIRES, OMG. ><
Plan: I'm going to hot glue all the solder joints, tape the connection wires together so they're not in that sprawling mess like in the photo above, and construct the box! Unfortunately, I have no access to a laser printer anytime soon, so there's 2 options: (1) cut and shape a box by hand from scrap wood (I'll have to make a new CAD drawing for this), or (2) use an old scanner as a base. When I had finished the soldering and was contemplating how to make the box, Steve from MITERS offered up an old scanner that was lying around. Though it's a bit too large to fit inside my backpack, the depth of the scanner looked perfect for the distance between the LEDs and the diffuser - I'll keep it as a Plan B at least!
Also, since this was the most soldering I've done in one sitting yet, I learned to use a new trick! I bundled up each colored wire together and soldered the ends all in one round - I should have thought of this earlier, haha. In fact, the veteran solder-ers all replied they knew of this trick already! I guess that's what experience is all about...
Above: Group soldering in process.
On another note, the school semester started this week! I have some things I want to build and do during this time, so hopefully my time won't be completely eaten by my schedule!
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